A disk drive is an information storage device. A disk drive includes one or more disks clamped to a rotating spindle, and at least one head for reading information representing data from and/or writing data to the surfaces of each disk. The head is supported by a suspension coupled to an actuator that may be driven by a voice coil motor. Control electronics in the disk drive provide electrical pulses to the voice coil motor to move the head to desired positions on the disks to read and write the data in circular tracks on the disks, and to park the head in a safe area when not in use or when otherwise desired for protection of the disk drive.
Certain mechanical shocks to disk drives can cause the head or heads to write data outside an intended track if the shock occurs during or just prior to a write. Adjacent user track data can become corrupted if such writes are allowed to continue. Some disk drives detect shocks, sometimes referred to as sharp jerk events, and attempt to prevent the writing of data when certain shocks are detected.
Not all shocks may result in corruption of adjacent track data if writes are allowed to continue. However, such writes may result in data being written off center from the track, making it more difficult to read.